December on the Subway at Midnight

I’m sitting across from a young man wearing a black tuxedo and a bow tie. He wears silver rings all over his hands. Black combat boots. A dusty black coat. As I write this he looks up at me, smiling, unintentionally, I think, more of a natural reaction when one sees something pleasant than an effort to capture my interest.

I glance away from my page for a bare moment to meet his eyes. We recognize something in each other–he sees the rings on my hands and my long black coat, my short, dyed-black hair, and because of these symbols, we connect. I turn my attention again towards writing this, but I still feel his eyes on me. As I glance back up at him again once, twice, to write down these details, he begins to get the feeling that I’m writing about him.

-ND

Traveling in The Autumn On Wednesday

I’m in the streets
“Give me that book,” says beanie, panting
student in pink whirls
“Give me the book,” he repeats
Next block book stand squatting, beanie no. 2 shivering in fingerless gloves
Big man’s saxophone plays ‘dream a little dream of me’
Like a toddler trying to learn the alphabet: without reason to be self-conscious, and pathetic
Suddenly the air smells like a memory
It smells like my first plane ride
And the boy sitting next to me who stole my window seat even though he had been on a plane before and I hadn’t and he agreed before that I could have the window seat and lied
Short, fat man waddles past, “sexy.”
He looks at the ground, ready to disown it
his mouth in my ear
I hunch in layers of sweaters and frown my unwashed face
I am every raging feminist
Train arrives, I let baby carriage in
Leather jacket cuts me off
Doesn’t move in to let me on,
But sizes me up when I brush past him to a seat
A decade of “let’s say you’re attacked on the subway, what do you do?”
“Use my fingernails to scratch his eyes out”
re-calls
Underground, faces pass on parallel lines
opposite, identical, and never touching
Not frowning like I had a bad day
Or smiling like I am in love
Ab-sent
I wonder what story girl in pink stole
The conductor and his passengers are speaking in tongues
And I’ve been traveling for hours
(Everything is further away when it’s cold outside)
The woman beside me struggles her peripherals to read this
But realizes the story isn’t written in her language
Dull glide of the train sounds like hands pressed to ears
It’s never sounded this way before
Maybe it’s because of the ice which gropes my hands and
The insides of my thighs when those doors slide open
Left is a couple, man’s arm splayed over his girl’s shoulders and it’s touching my shoulder,
But he doesn’t care,
He’s telling her a story

-ND